Farewells are Illogical
by CarminaVulcana
Summary: Saying goodbye is hard. How much harder is it when the person leaving is a friend, a brother, and a warrior you fought beside? Written because one of my supervisors at work just lost her grandmother-in-law and her nephew. She is heartbroken. And this is for her, because she is one of the nicest people I know.


The weather has no right to be so beautiful. It is strange that the sun had shone yesterday, the moon had risen last night, and the birds had sung yesterday morning the same as they did every day… and today would be exactly the same. Except for one thing that has changed.

He is not here anymore. His cool, collected voice is not here to tell me that I am being illogical. His expertise will be required like always today, but for once he will not respond to the questions of the junior scientists.

And somewhere on this campus, he will be given a place to call his own; six feet under, a 6X3 block of earth where he will rest his tired body after this too short journey. After all, this was the only place left to him after Vulcan's destruction. And maybe he will find a measure of peace in knowing that his mother lived on this planet, called it home, and cherished it even though she hadn't seen it in decades.

Somewhere, Commander Spock is raising his left eyebrow at my thoughts. And I cannot see it anymore. Bones is not here to punctuate my rather poetic ramblings with his southern brand of profanity. No, today he has no choice expletives for our beloved hobgoblin. He is drinking away his silence, unable to understand why his words fail him today, when they didn't do so even on the day Jocelyn took everything away from him.

I do not even want to talk about Uhura. I know it is cowardly, and as her captain, I should go to her…say something leader-like and make her feel better. It is what he would have done in his odd, seemingly unemotional way. But he is not here. And I am not him. I can never be.

Which reminds me that a part of me desperately wants to type my resignation. I cannot bear to think that his place on the bridge will be replaced by someone else and that life would go back to how it was. That is just not how the universe works. And as smart as everyone is here, they refuse to realize that.

They keep saying that he made the supreme sacrifice. I am wondering, quite traitorously if it was worth it. Sure we were able to avoid a major altercation with the Klingons, but did he really need to take such a crazy risk. Would it have been so bad if all of us had gone down with him. Or maybe if we had all gone with him or not let him go at all, I would have found another way. No, scratch that, I should have found another way. I always did in the past.

Except for the one time it really mattered.

He is not here. And I am terrified of acknowledging it. Soon his father will arrive, and I will be expected to eloquently tell him that his son had been brave and calm in the face of his last moments. I would be lying. I have no idea what his last moments were like. I only remember him nodding to me determinedly before beaming onto the enemy ship. And after that I only saw him as he is now, cold and lifeless.

The medics have cleaned him up, made him look presentable, even after how brutally the Klingons killed him. Strangely enough, his face was spared by them. They caught him. And they hurt him. But they let him keep his face.

And they made it so much harder on us to believe that he was gone. I want to take comfort in the fact that we got him out before the enemy ship went up in flames, thanks to the detonation devices he placed inside its warp core.

We insisted that he give it enough time so that we could get him out. It didn't make a difference in the end. The time only prolonged his misery. And we were too late in carrying out the one task for which we had taken all that extra time.

He looked peaceful. He always looked like that when he slept after a long mission. He sometimes looked like that when he meditated. And he will look like that for a little while. And then nature will take him into her arms and make him one with her elements.

Will this be farewell, then?

"That is illogical," his voice echoes in my mind, only slightly amused as if he was simply pointing out the holes in my ramblings.

Farewells are illogical. Because he will never really be gone.


End file.
